What do our political parties think about religious conservatives whose faith teaches them that there are sexual sins, including adultery and homosexuality?

The answer is: It depends when you ask them.

You can’t go to a Sikh temple or a Muslim mosque or an Orthodox Jewish synagogue during an election campaign without bumping into politicians of every stripe. It’s a spectacle of political theatre, especially when religious headgear is introduced. Politicians who are terrified of looking goofy in a cowboy hat will fight over who gets to wear the brightest-coloured turban at Vaisakhi.

But after the votes are counted, religious conservatives, particularly minorities, have a new role. Their new job is to be seen — preferably in the camera shot while liberal politicians do the talking — but not heard.

The fake furor over a foreign development charity named Crossroads Christian Communications shows Christian conservatives have it the worst, though. They received a $545,000 grant from CIDA, Canada’s foreign aid agency, to build latrines and dig water wells in Africa.

Last week, the Toronto Globe and Mail published a breathless attack on Crossroads, saying their website back in Canada — brace yourselves — paraphrased the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality.

On cue, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair denounced Crossroads, saying its values were un-Canadian, and possibly illegal. His MP Megan Leslie went further, suggesting no group that teaches homosexuality is a sin should receive any government money.

Mulcair’s riding of Outremont is about 20% Jewish, including many Orthodox Jews. Do you think Mulcair says that when he’s campaigning in synagogues?

When Megan Leslie is gladhanding Sikhs?

Why does the secular left so boldly attack evangelicals — but fear to criticize minority religions or even the Catholic church, which has its own CIDA-funded foreign aid groups, and of course publicly funded schools that also teach the concept of sexual sins?

With politicians, you can rarely go wrong by assuming malice.

But in this case, ignorance is more likely to blame. Leftist, secular MPs — like the Media Party — just don’t understand the concept of sin.

Christianity isn’t about the absence of sin; it’s based on sin. It’s built on sinners. The religion has no purpose for people who don’t sin. The Pope himself is a sinner, and goes to confession regularly.

Christians don’t believe in destroying sinners — they believe in reforming them, bringing them out of sin through love. The Globe and Mail seems to suggest the people at Crossroads were homophobes, but would homophobes be in the middle of the AIDS epidemic in Africa, ministering to the sick?

That’s the thing about the NDP’s proposed fatwa against Christian charities.

It’s not just an admission that their sole purpose for Sikhs and Hindus and Muslims and Orthodox Jews is for their votes alone.

It’s that, if we were to shut down every charity inspired by Christian faith — World Vision, Oxfam, Salvation Army, and a hundred others — there really wouldn’t be a lot of charities out there. It’s not gay rights groups like EGALE running the hospices in Africa. It’s the Christians.

Maybe that’s what infuriates leftist bigots so much — that there are people who are motivated not by money or power, but by a religious faith so strong that they will cross the world to help sinners.

Blame it on ignorance: Leftist, secular MPs — like the Media Party — just don’t get the concept of sin

What do our political parties think about religious conservatives whose faith teaches them that there are sexual sins, including adultery and homosexuality?

The answer is: It depends when you ask them.

You can’t go to a Sikh temple or a Muslim mosque or an Orthodox Jewish synagogue during an election campaign without bumping into politicians of every stripe. It’s a spectacle of political theatre, especially when religious headgear is introduced. Politicians who are terrified of looking goofy in a cowboy hat will fight over who gets to wear the brightest-coloured turban at Vaisakhi.

But after the votes are counted, religious conservatives, particularly minorities, have a new role. Their new job is to be seen — preferably in the camera shot while liberal politicians do the talking — but not heard.